The authors suggest that because dodos and solitaires were ground-dwellers, they relied on smell to find food, making an oddly large olfactory lobe an asset. The study found that both the dodo and the Rodrigues solitaire had large and differentiated olfactory bulbs, an unusual trait in birds, which depend on sight and thus usually have more heavily developed optical lobes. While the brains of dodos might not have been small, they did reveal some unexpected surprises. “So if you take brain size as a proxy for intelligence, dodos probably had a similar intelligence level to pigeons," Gold said. "Of course, there’s more to intelligence than just overall brain size, but this gives us a basic measure.” The results found that the dodo's brain was about average for its body size. In the Museum's Microscopy and Imaging Facility, Gold also CT-scanned the skulls of seven species of pigeons for comparison, while colleagues at the Natural History Museum of Denmark and National Museum of Scotland sent her the endocasts for the dodo’s closest relative, the now-extinct Rodrigues solitaire ( Pezophaps solitaria). The recent discovery of a fantastic specimen of dodo DNA was the last clue needed to complete the extinct bird’s genome, announced a team of biological researchers at the University of. Side views of brain scans from the dodo (A), the Rodrigues solitaire (B), and Caloenas nicobarica (C), a type of pigeon. Though the bird has become iconic in popular culture, most aspects of the dodo’s biology are still unknown, partly because specimens are extremely rare. To examine the brain of the dodo, Gold tracked down a well-preserved skull from the collections of London's Natural History Museum and imaged it there with high-resolution computed tomography (CT) scanning, which can produce images of the brain inferred from the shape of the skull. Today, they are almost exclusively known for becoming extinct, and I think that’s why we’ve given them this reputation of being dumb,” said Eugenia Gold, the lead author of the paper, a research associate and recent graduate of the Museum's Richard Gilder Graduate School, and an instructor in the Department of Anatomical Sciences at Stony Brook University. "Because of that behavior and invasive species that were introduced to the island, they disappeared in less than 100 years after humans arrived. That led to the birds being herded onto passing boats as an easy meal for passing sailors. When sailors discovered the island in the late 1500s, the dodo didn't fear these new arrivals. The dodo ( Raphus cucullatus) was a large, flightless bird that lived on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, where they were last seen alive in 1662. Evidence has been found that even before human settlement, many of the birds died in flash floods. Lack of flight also made dodos ill-suited to surviving natural disasters. The dodos literally had no fight or flight reflex. A model of a dodo that will be on display in the Museum’s upcoming exhibition about the relationships between birds and dinosaurs, Dinosaurs Among Us. Hunting would be an overstatement, since the flightless birds were more curious about their potential killers than afraid.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |